Monomakh
by romanovhistory
Summary: Tsarevna Maria crosses Europe from emerging Tsarist Russia to Reformation England, 1554 - her fate? King Edward VI, Scottish feud, prophecy and power, rising up to crash down: the mythology of one nation collides with the past, present and future of another, and in the middle of it all, a girl grows into a woman, and that woman becomes the fruit of legends. AU.


**A/N: Hello! This is an AU about what may have happened if Edward VI, little Prince Edward, had survived his illness in summer 1553, made an alliance with Russia and married the sister of the infamous Ivan The Terrible (she's my own character; Ivan only had a brother, Yuri). Her name is Tsarevna Maria (meaning, _daughter of the Tsar)_, and she will be Queen Maria of England. I'm trying to keep many of the details historically accurate, but I'm introducing Slavic folklore to my story so this may take a supernatural turn, I suppose! No worries, I won't make it absolute ridiculous. If you've read _Deathless_ by Catherynne M. Valente, think that, which really inspired me (and is absolutely beautiful - get reading!).**

**With the Russian characters, which are actually quite few, many will have patronymics, eg. Ivanovich and Ivanovna. I'll try not to use them too much, but it's a Russian thing and it means (for the examples) _Son of Ivan _and_ Daughter of Ivan_. The history of the Tudor period crops up time and time again, and you will see people from the era (wives, politicians, Mary and Elizabeth, etc), but I don't want to give anything away, so here we go! **

**The story will be told from Maria's perspective, beginning as she journeys to England. New sections are indicated by the first word in bold. If you like it or dislike it, please let me know in a review, and I think you can favourite or keep watch other stories, which would be really great :)**

* * *

**MONOMAKH - "HE WHO FIGHTS ALONE"**

**I -JOURNEY**

In a certain land, in the year fifteen fifty four, fifteen fifty four years after God clapped his hands together and - with a thunder like the rumble of a peasant boy's belly, who stands in an city scarce of bread and abundant of bones and his tears, like his mother's milk, are of dust - the world appeared, talking snakes slithering out of sun rays and golden apples of strength and youth the fruit of a woman's spread legs and a man's bated breath as they entered a glorious idyll; fifteen fifty four years after, Tsarevna Maria left Russia.

A bright light for day, a dimmer light for night; God showered the inhabitants with pomegranates from the skies, and the seeds fell down throats to lodge in rib cages to grow and grow into beating hearts, and from within grew a craving for flesh and feeling, and as the days of that very first year passed heartbeats increased, as person found person and hearts found hearts, a man found his knees and God found a babe, no bigger than his fingernail, and named himself _dedushka_.

It is the year 1554; the Tsarevna is leaving Russia, and the skies no longer shower pomegranates, for why would the human race grow their own hearts, when they could print them or whittle them from wood? God observes his granddaughter, unpicking the stitches of her skin; _ah_, he sees her heart is not yet ripe, and so he sits back into the smoke of the skies, and he waits. She rides out of the Kremlin's walls, and God draws a breath.

* * *

**MARCH 1554 **

**MOSCOW, TSARDOM OF RUSSIA **

**The** pass through Moscow took much time, and the March wind has nipped my ears red as the Kremlin's Vodovzvodnaya Tower, which I can still see from the outskirts of the city on the back of my horse. I close my eyes and open them again, close and open, close and open, trying to picture it in the darkness of closed eyelids to ensure I do not forget it. Moscow, with the Moskva River flowing through its centre, from Smolensk's icy steppes to Kolomna, eloping with the Oka to Nizhny Novgorod, that old rival, and Vladimir, Monomakh's city, and Oryol, Kaluga - cities I will never see. But the Volga finds them, old and crabby _Volga-Matushka_, and drags them south to the Khvalis Sea, where the salt stings their eyes and they remember what happens when you allow yourself to fall in love; you cut and sting and bleed. That's why we don't do it anymore, because we have learnt, and now we know better.

I am leaving Moscow. Within weeks I will pass through Livonia, Poland and into the German lands of Brandenburg, Saxony and Hesse, through Cologne, Brabant and Flanders. The English Channel will open before me and on a ship I will ride the waves across, watching, waiting, and the Thames will welcome us into London, an unsteady barge of grey supported by English _rusalka_; battle-ready water nymphs with red hair and white skin and mud streaked on cheeks as war paint, working with the pirates to harass Spanish ships. They wear rings on each finger, each a portrait of their dead mother, and pearls around their little necks. Waiting at the docks are their favourites; a Robert from Leicester, a Robert from Essex.

At London I will meet my husband.

**Sir** Constantine Constantinovich Afanasyev tells me the English King's father had six wives, three of which died before their time. He tells me the first wife could not give him a son, the second could not live up to her promises, and the third was taken away, because King Henry was in debt to justice, and justice was not in the mood to wait any longer for payment, love be damned. There were three more; one horse, one adulteress, one survivor.

"We are not quite sure whether the Boy King prefers his wives burned or beheaded," Sir Constantine keeps one hand on his hat to keep it down. "No one has thought to ask just yet." _Rasputitsa_, in all it's windy, wet glory, has arrived; the roads are slick with mud as we ride the last miles into Poland, the wind raging, but at least the rain has ceased.

"He might prefer them alive," I suggest, with some hope. _Please don't let him be a madman, slashing his sword in the air at imaginary enemies. I don't want to travel all this way to be married to a madman. _

Sir Constantine is in his thirtieth decade; his sandy hair and his dark eyes don't make him handsome, his wit is sharper than his sword and his temper hotter than Hell. He doesn't have many friends in Moscow and I don't think he'll make many in London, but I am glad to have him by my side. He has incredible insight and his observation of others is lethally sharp. For a man who has never travelled to England, he speaks impressive English. "Have faith, Sir Constantine," I say, "I don't plan on having a tryst with the servants."

"I'm afraid at the English Court, my lady, plans tend to go awry," says Sir Constantine. He motions with his hands, raising one finger and then the next; "King Henry planned on getting a divorce from Cardinal Wolsey - it didn't happen. King Henry planned on winning the boxing match with the King of France - it didn't happen. King Henry planned on getting the Scottish Queen for a daughter-in-law - it didn't happen."

"That was Henry. I am marrying Edward, and you can't hold his father's failures against him. He's an entirely different person." _I am sure he is different. I am not marrying a failing tyrant. I am not marrying a madman. _

The look in Sir Constantine's eyes says _like father, like son._

**King** Edward's wife was supposed to Scottish. Her name is Mary.

"They say she's more French than Scottish now," says Sir Constantine, as we trot through German forests. "For she has lived in France for some time. Chic, confident, beautiful, a Queen and a Queen-to-be - she appears to have everything, but I dare say beneath the satin and sapphires is loneliness. Her father is dead and her mother abroad running her country for her. No siblings, only the French."

After Mary, there was Elisabeth.

"French. I believe she shares a bedroom with Mary of Scots. She is nine years old-"

"A nine year old bride!" I exclaim with unrestrained laughter. I picture the tall, sixteen-year-old King at the alter, with a girl who barely reaches his elbows trussed up like a little hunk of marchpane, and can't help but cackle at its ridiculousness. "A nine year old bride! How absurd!"

Sir Constantine shakes his head, the smallest smile lifting his glued, crusty lips. "An alliance, Tsarevna. The English want the money, the plate and the security of having an ally against Rome and the Emperor. If the King has to bed a nine-year-old to get it, he'll bed the nine-year-old. If he has to bed a dog, he'll bed the dog. You and I, my lady, know that the girl was French - so she's both. As it happened, the English clashed with the Scots, and so the French grabbed little Elisabeth's skirts and dragged her from square-to-square, back to their side of the chessboard."

Katharina Vasa was third.

"Her name sounds almost Russian," I comment. "Katharina, Ekaterina. Vasa."

"Swedish. The eldest daughter of the Swedish King and the first Princess of Sweden for hundreds of years. Katharina was quite the catch, as was the smallpox that killed her."

I am fourth. _The last choice. _

"The Duke of Northumberland cast his gaze to us the summer that followed Katharina's death; last summer with it's hearty crop reaping and relentlessly hot sun. Russia is a rising power in Europe and England took the first step to binding west to east. It's revolutionary. This is country of great change and what was never thought of in 1504 is thought of in 1554. In 1504, my lady, Russians married Russians, but in 1554, Russians marry Englishmen. Our nation is changing the way European leaders play the game of diplomacy and politics, and your brother Tsar Ivan has only been Tsar for seven years."

_The last one to be considered. The last choice. _

"You are a safe choice, with no ties to Catholicism or to other European powers, so there can be no doubt of double-crossing the terms of the alliance; and a historic choice; you will be the first Eastern European consort of any Western European ruler."

_The final option. The only option left._

Mary, Elisabeth, Katharina, Maria.

_Don't worry, there's always the Russian to fall back on. _

Scot, French, Swede, Russian.

_It's fine, it's fine, we'll just have to buy the Russian. _

Queen, Princesse, Prinsessa, Tsarevna.

_Yes, she's Russian, but at least you've got a Queen. _

As we venture through Germany, galloping towards the Low Countries, my heart thumps. _Last resort. Last resort. Last resort. _

**I** speak in Russian as much as I can, but never in the presence of my escort, Lord Feodor Ivanovich Godunov;

"Your Majesty, I _must_ insist you speak the English language. It is the tongue of the nation that you will very soon call home, and your son will inherit the land. I _must_ insist you speak it at all times."

"Your Majesty, again I _must_ insist English is the tongue you speak in. I know you have been learning to speak, read and write the language for eight months now, but still, practice would still be very useful to you."

"Your Majesty, my lady, _please_ refrain from speaking in Russian. England is the country you will be Queen of, and English is its tongue, and so it is of great importance you speak the language well."

It seems to be all Godunov thinks of for the entire journey, and it drives me insane. As we ride into Cologne, my memories of Moscow become harder to remember, and I start longing to hear myself speak in my native tongue because it makes me believe this is just a visit, and I will return to the Palace of Facets in mere weeks. I will never return to the Palace of Facets. I will never see the gilded friezes on the wooden walls, the ruddy red Kremlin Towers, and I will never wade in the Moskva River again, knowing that if I let the current whisk me away I would pass fields where, perhaps in another life, my brothers died in battle against the Lithuanians and the Mongols; I would pass under skies where fire-birds soar and if I was to get up and wander into that forest, hidden in the trees could be a hut of skulls, standing on chickens legs, and within the fearsome Baba Yaga taps her foot, waiting for me to walk in, waiting to set me three tasks, waiting to climb into her mortar and fly east, where our men cannot go.

I will see the English Channel within a week, they say. I will see my husband, the lavish, intelligent, religious zealot King Edward VI, and, if he is in good humour, his sisters too. One has hair like fire but dresses in monochrome, a show of modesty and purity to contradict the belief that she is like her mother, an incestuous whore. The other has skin like sand and underneath her furs she dares to grip a rosary, speaking softly with weighted words accented in Spanish, and she sleeps alone, not quite disgraced. I will see the Duke of Northumberland, the King's guardian. I will see the King's friends - will they be my friends? I have brought only ten ladies to serve me, and although I am close to lively Olishka Trubetskoya and mathematically brilliant Anya Sheremeteva, and I know they will fit in so well in England and I wish they were not like two little ducklings, terrified as they swim towards the bigger, boundless pool - I think I would like English friends. Will they like me? Will my English be too accented for them to understand? Will the King be able to understand me?

_Please let him be kind. Please don't let them judge us. Please let them be receptive and open-minded. Please, I don't want to be alone. I've never met him, I don't expect him to love me at first glance, but please let him pursue me, let me be curious, let me attempt conversation even if I cannot talk back. _

We leave Cologne, bellies full of fresh bread and cheese, and move on towards Brabant. We travel like common people, because no one has ever seen us. Are we the first Russians to travel so far West? I doubt it, but it still excites me to imagine none of the Russian nobles have rode this far - not proud old Brodsky, or Belsky the sneering sniper. If we told the German nobles who we were, the reception may not be any warmer than that of the inn keepers - we're not exactly familiar faces. Once or twice I've silenced Lord Godunov when he's almost revealed my status as future Queen of England and Tsarevna of Tsarist Russia, because it's unimportant; what's important is we reach our destination - the docks of Flanders - safe, with everything we set out with still in tact. We have all of our coin, plate, jewels and fine fabrics and important papers, and we have good bread and wine and our health.

My English is good, confirmed by the English Ambassador himself days before our journey began. From conversing with him, and with my English tutor Sir Thomas Woodcox - who rides just behind me each day with a translucent glaze over his bright blue eyes, dreaming of his homeland, hoping with all his heart it is the same country he left a year ago - for eight months, I now know more than the basics - _yes, no, thank you, hello, please, what a pleasure it is to meet you_ - but I can hold a conversation, be it of dresses, charity or scripture.

"I have not read any of the scriptures they say His Majesty the King has," I say to Sir Thomas, "and they tell me he's very fond of them." I know if he was riding beside me, instead of a step or two behind, and if he wasn't constantly checking his conduct, Sir Thomas would raise an eyebrow. He knows why I haven't read them. He knows I dislike scripture. _Everyone_ knows I dislike scripture.

"The King will not mind, my lady, I am sure. You may have the opportunity to read them if you wish when we arrive at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich; I recall the King's library is of a great size." He replies.

_I do not think I wish it. I cannot hide behind the bookshelves and pretend I am enjoying myself._

"Will they allow me to ride, Sir Thomas?" I ask, in Russian, and Lord Godunov turns his head as if to say, _please! **Stop!** English, English!_

"Unless Your Majesty is with child, you will never be prohibited from riding. His Grace the King will be immensely pleased that my lady is a keen horsewoman," says Sir Thomas, in English.

_Ah - with child. Everything is yours until you are with child. Then the noose begins to tighten: I must not miscarry, I must not deliver a daughter. I must have a son. It cannot be dead and it cannot be a girl. The baby must be a boy and it must live. That is where all the others went wrong - their babies were dead, or females, or never arrived. It must not be the same for me._

**The** English Channel is before me. If I squint at the distance I can see land rising from the water. England is there. England is before me. I am almost there. My destiny, like a scroll, I am taking it into my hands and beginning to unravel the parchment, and the words come to life. In two months, I shall be Queen of England. I am the first Eastern European Queen of a Western nation, and the first Russian Queen Consort in Europe. I am a trailblazer. I think to the future and I wonder, _will there be another Russian Queen of England? Will other countries follow and my kinswomen, the daughters of my brother Tsar Ivan, will become Queens too? Will my son, the future King, marry a daughter of Mary of Scots and the French Dauphin? How many battles will be fought for that alliance?_

My skin prickles, touched by the fresh sea air. I have worn a red velvet cloak whilst I have traveled, but beneath it my garb is still in the Russian fashion: a white cambric blouse with a high neck and baggy sleeves to my wrists; a simple black wool sarafan without embroidery or trimmings - the simplest dress I have ever owned - with a matching vest atop, soft leather boots and no jewelry except my earrings of gold and pearl, my sixteenth birthday gift from my brothers Ivan and Yuri two months ago.

I will disregard my Russian dress once I step onto the ship sent to us by King Edward to fetch me to him. It is part of my past and the life I led as only the Tsar's sister, daughter of Tsar Vasili. The English show the skin just above the breasts, which we do not do and which has been topic of a debate for my ladies - _isn't it indecent?_ Their skirts flare out further and their sleeves are slashed to reveal the fabric underneath. My first English gown and headdress, personally selected by Princess Elizabeth, the King's favourite sister, is folded neatly in a chest, waiting to be worn that coming day when I step onto English soil.

My heartbeats are irregular and my breath shaky with nerves. I close my eyes and try to imagine the Kremlin, with her eighteen towers at the centre of my city, my Moscow, but all I can see is darkness. My eyes open and my head spins, and the sea moves softly, and England is still there, just a small bump of land, without towers, without buildings, waiting for me.

* * *

**A/N: Yeah, me again! Not much folklore yet, a couple mentions here and there, but you will see it in the next chapter I can guarantee, as you will Edward and co, which is exciting! No? Yes? Tell me what you think below. I really love to hear from people and learn from what they say, so please tell me what you think. I wanted to use Chapter I to get you into Maria's head, as the rest of the story will be in her perspective, and now you know who she is, what she wants, etc. Thanks for reading guys, I really appreciate it :)**


End file.
